Honou Productions – Anime Music Videos

All In a Day’s Work

June 15, 2025 LantisEscudo

I made a trip to Japan in December 2024, and one of the places I made a point to visit was the Wakayama Electric Railway's Kishigawa Line, and in particular Idakiso and Kishi Stations, where the famous stationmaster cats Niitama and Yontama were on duty.

In the gift shop, there were a pair of DVDs celebrating the first stationmaster cat, Tama, which I immediately picked up, thinking they'd be a fun source to use for a video.

My original thought was to use an instrumental version of "Sampo" from Totoro, since it had the striding quality that epitomizes how cats walk, but both versions of the song on the soundtrack had lyrics, so I went looking for other options. After trying a few other songs like the cat parts from "Peter and the Wolf," I came back to the Totoro soundtrack to see if another track might work. Finding "Lets Go to the Hospital" was both satisfying and frustrating, since it was the instrumental version of "Sampo" I was looking for in the first place that I had overlooked because of the title.

In choosing footage, I decided to focus on just Tama, which made a large portion of the DVDs difficult to use, as I wanted to avoid using footage that included her two assistants, Miiko and Chibi.

The video got a good reaction in RICE 2025, and was nominated as a finalist in the Palate Cleanser category.

Video - Tama and the Tama Train; Super Station Master Tama: Riding the Strawberry Wind
Audio - Joe Hisaishi - Let's Go to the Hospital
Completed January 2025

YouTube blocked the video due to the audio, but I can share it through Google Drive.

Uncategorized

Community Spirit

June 15, 2025 LantisEscudo

I'd had this idea on my list for a while, since right after Frozen 2 was in theaters. I'd picked up the soundtrack and heard this cut song - my brain immediately suggested Poppy Hill as a pairing, and it marinated on my idea list for a few years.

After rushing to finish and submit Reflecting North to AWA 2025's Accolades on Friday morning from my hotel room at Bakuretsu Con 2025, I spent most of the rest of the day at the con. I got back to my room around 8PM, several hours earlier than I had planned, and since I happened to have had the footage with me, I decided to see if I could Iron Chef it into a submittable form in the four hours before the deadline at midnight.

I did manage to get it complete in time, but there were a few compromises along the way. I ended up using a lot more solo walking shots than I intended, mainly to avoid having to spend any of my limited time removing lip flap.

Overall, a fun challenge to tackle and a decent result. I'm glad to have the idea out of my brain and to have used one of the more obscure Ghibli titles in making it.

Video - From Up On Poppy Hill
Audio - Kristen Bell - Home (from Frozen 2)
Completed October 2024

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link

AMV Videos

Reflecting North

June 15, 2025 LantisEscudo

Back in 2004, norskotaku released their video Illuminations I: Reflections of a Goddess, an almost-10-minute-long epic using the Ah! My Goddess movie and the "Reflections of Earth" segment from EPCOT's Illuminations fireworks show, and I absolutely loved the video. They included in their video description that they planned to do a second video, also using the Ah! My Goddess movie paired with the "We Go On" section of Illuminations.

20 years later, that first video turned out to be the last one norskotaku would release (as of 2025, at least), but it had stuck with me to the point that I'd bought the audio CD for Illuminations and even made my so-far-only trip to EPCOT at Disney World to catch the fireworks show before it closed in 2019 (barely avoiding getting hit by Hurricane Dorian by only one day).

In the intervening two decades, Ah! My Goddess had also gotten two seasons of TV series and an OVA, so I decided that I wanted to both close the circle and pay tribute to the original video by making a video using the "We Go On" segment, but with the newer series instead of the movie.

Unfortunately, the period of time I had to edit it for AWA 2025's Accolades competition directly overlapped with the preparation period for Bakuretsu Con 2025, where I was the coordinator for the AMV Contest - in fact, the AWA submission deadline was on the convention's opening Friday. The later portions of the video ended up disappointingly rushed, and were actually edited in my hotel room at Bakuretsu Con Thursday night and Friday morning before I started my con day. I want to go back and revise those portions of the video someday, but I've changed primary editing programs in the meantime (from Adobe Premiere to Davinci Resolve), so converting the timeline will take some effort to set up.

While I'm disappointed in the result, I did enjoy making this one, and hopefully the revised-someday-version will be better.

Video - Ah! My Goddess TV
Audio - Kellie Coffey - We Go On (from EPCOT's Illuminations)
Completed October 2024

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

AMV Project Editor Videos

Rule of Thirds (POE 2024 Round 2)

June 15, 2025 LantisEscudo

I was incredibly busy during POE 2024, so I only managed to participate in one round, Round 2. That round had the theme of "Hobby Lobby," where we were asked to create a video in a week that showcased characters enjoying a hobby.

I'd had "Life Through a Lens" on my ideas list for a while after it popped up in a Spotify Weekly list for me, and it felt like a perfect match for the theme, using characters that were photographers. I had debated several different video sources as options, as well as going massively multi-source, but I ended up deciding to limit it to three series, largely to make the title pun. The Rule of Thirds is a photography framing technique where you mentally divide the image into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, and then frame your photo so that the object of interest is near one of the four intersection points of the one-third lines.

Scrubbing through the footage for usable scenes took longer than I planned, since I'd only actually watched one of the three (my backlog is deep and only growing), but once I'd managed all of that, the video itself came together pretty quickly.

I never looked at the results of the round judging, so I don't really know how well it was received, but a couple people did mention to me that they enjoyed it.

Video - Photo Kano, Tada Never Falls In Love, Waiting In the Summer
Audio - Jackson Harris - Life Through a Lens
Completed September 2024

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Contest Opening Videos

2024 Anime Boston AMV Contest Opening

June 11, 2025 LantisEscudo

Beginning with 2024, Anime Boston no longer had a designated theme, so I needed to come up with an idea for an opening without that prompt to start brainstorming from. The idea finally sprouted when I was talking to a friend of mine that goes to Otakon every year, and they complained about the contest opening always using the entire song of ELO's "Twilight" because they felt it was too long.

I decided I wanted to create an opening that I could reuse large parts of the framework of year-to-year, using an iconic song related to Boston. Finding the song was a pretty easy choice, as "Shipping Up to Boston" is used almost everywhere, and it also is a rocking song that definitely gets crowds excited. I found a really good instrumental version that I could cleanly shorten down to about a minute to avoid overstaying its welcome.

My primary idea was to take scenes from anime and juxtapose them against shots of landmarks from around the city. I spent a couple days running around the city shooting my own footage, since it was a lot easier to get the shots I wanted that way instead of trying to use stock footage libraries.

There are a couple of local and con in-jokes in the video, such as the pairing of the Isabella Gardner Museum (the site of a famous unsolved art heist) and Lupin. The first two shots are nods to the con's history, as Charlie's Kitchen was the restaurant the con's founders were in when they decided to start the con, and the Park Plaza was the con's home for the first two years before it moved to the Hynes.

It got a good reaction at the showing, and I also started including it as the opener to the awards show, as it only adds a minute to the run time, but sets up the showing better than jumping straight into the awards.

Video - Various Anime, Original footage
Audio - Dropkick Murphys - Shipping Up to Boston (instrumental)
Completed March 2024

YouTube Link

AMV Videos

The Hero We Need

June 11, 2025 LantisEscudo

One of my other hobbies besides AMVs is collecting retro video games, which is how I first discovered the existence of Eight Man, which has an also-obscure game for the Neo Geo. The series was originally broadcast in 1963/64, and is the origin of Japan's first cyborg superhero, predating Kamen Rider by about eight years. A few years ago, I saw a post on then-Twitter announcing that the series was getting a BluRay release in Japan, and on a whim, I decided to jump on it, and it sat in my collection waiting for an idea to strike.

Inspiration finally struck right after the deadline for RICE 2024, and just before the deadline for Sakuracon, when I stumbled across a copy of the Fleischer Superman shorts in a store and the Superman/Eight Man parallel jumped into my head. I listened to quite a few different Superman themes to figure out which one fit best, and settled on the Lois & Clark version, partially because I could use the original opening as a reference to make a shot-for-shot parody, since I wanted to send something new to Sakuracon and only had a few days to put it together.

I managed to find the matching fonts from the original L&C opening for the credits, and also put the accurate matching credits for Eight Man (though with character names instead of actor names). There were a few shots I had to stretch a bit to find a match to the original shots (especially for some of the Lois shots), but mostly managed to find something that was close enough to work.

This was fun to make, and I want to use the series again someday.

Video - Eight Man
Audio - Jay Gruska - Lois & Clark Main Theme
Completed February 2024

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

AMV Videos

Parallel Valleys

June 11, 2025 LantisEscudo

This video probably holds my personal record for the longest time between initial idea and actually editing the video. I've found notes about this idea in text files dating back to at least 2005, so it's 19 years old minimum. I had actually completely forgotten about it for quite a while, until I was going through some old hard drives and found one of my old lists of potential ideas.

The song had a lot of strong potential for using either Utena or Anthy as the viewpoint character, so I'd originally intended to do this as two separate videos, with working titles of "Ravine: Utena Face" and "Ravine: Anthy Face." After finding the old list and pulling the idea out of mothballs, I decided to do a single video, side-by-side with synched edits that would be in parallel for some sections.

I edited the Utena side first, then duplicated the timeline and replaced each edit clip-by-clip for the Anthy side, so that all of the edits and transitions would retain the same timing. I had to do some adjustments for where I'd used a native cut or fade, but overall, it was a thankfully straightforward process.

There are places I wish I'd matched the direction of camera movement between the two sides a bit better, but overall, I enjoyed how this one turned out.

Video - Revolutionary Girl Utena
Audio - Ace of Base - Ravine
Completed February 2024

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

AMV Videos

Burning Rubber

June 11, 2025 LantisEscudo

An editor friend of mine made an observation to me after AWA 2023 that I never edited with current sources, so it was sometimes easy to pick me out in blind contests. It was accurate - I'm usually very behind on watching things, given my already-huge backlog, but I wanted to deliberately defy their expectations for the next big blind contest, RICE in 2024.

Unusually, I actually watched Overtake! as it was coming out, so it was only a few months old when I started editing the video. I've been an F1 fan for a few years, so the iconic opening theme that includes the car engines as part of the music seemed like a perfect pairing. I went with the opening size version of the song rather than the full length version, since I didn't think I could sustain the energy needed for three and a half minutes with the available footage, but I think that also ended up biting me later when I ran out of song for the finale and had to rush the conclusion. I wish I'd been able to find a happy medium between them, but my audio editing skills couldn't find good cut points to shorten the longer version.

The length also ended up biting me in a couple of cases, as it was too short for many contests' main categories, but also wasn't an opening parody or a commercial.

Overall, this wasn't a bad effort, and I'm glad to have edited a video to yet another series that felt heavily overlooked.

Video - Overtake!
Audio - Brian Tyler - F1 Main Theme
Completed January 2024

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

AMV Project Editor Videos

Hinako’s Lullaby [Shabu Showdown 2023 Week 4]

June 28, 2024 LantisEscudo

The theme for the final round of Shabu Showdown was "Seven Deadly Sins," and I needed "Broadway Musical" on my bingo card to complete the double bingo, so I started looking for songs that could fit. Sleeping With Hinako had come up in conversation a few days before and I thought it would be amusing to use again, so I settled on Sloth as my sin pretty early. I was looking for lullabies or songs about sleeping and found Sylvia's Lullaby from Finding Neverland that felt like it'd work pretty well.

I did also have footage from Training With Hinako or Bathing With Hinako available, but neither of them ended up having any scenes that fit.

All in all, it was a fun little edit, but it did feel pretty similar to my video Naptime from back in 2010.

Video - Sleeping With Hinako
Audio - Laura Michelle Kelly - Sylvia's Lullaby (from Finding Neverland)
Completed December 2023

AnimeMusicVideos.org Link
YouTube Link

Award Winner LAMV Project Editor Videos

Beyond the Shire [Shabu Showdown 2023 Week 3]

January 11, 2024 LantisEscudo

The theme for the third round of Shabu Showdown 2023 was "Spectacular Settings," where editors were given one week to edit a video focusing on the scenery or setting of a source, rather than the plot or characters.

I immediately decided to use the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies, because of all the huge sweeping establishing shots in the films. The song was a lot harder to come up with, and I reached out for suggestions, and ended up getting the excellent song I ended up using from a link provided by VioletSkies.

I was also dealing with several real life things outside the event at the time, and I was worried I wouldn't be able to finish the whole song, so I edited a short version of the video that ended with the end of the first movie, just to have something to submit in case I ran out of time. I also decided once I started the second segment to focus just on Sam and Frodo's path through the films for narrative simplicity, though that did mean giving up the initial inspiration shot for the video (the epic long helicopter shot of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli running across the landscape in pursuit of the Orc army).

In the end, it came together much better than I initially thought it would, and was given the "Epic Fantasy" coordinator's award at the end of the event.

Video - Lord of the Rings movie trilogy
Audio - Tommee Profitt x MILCK - BEYOND
Completed November 2023

YouTube Link